John Adams - Political theory

By the time he took office, no American had read or written more about
government than John Adams. It is difficult to discover an important
volume on law, political theory, moral philosophy, or economy from
classical Greece and Rome to Enlightenment Europe that had escaped his
critical eye. He was not an abstract political thinker; rather, he read
and wrote to understand and solve the problems of society in his own day.
At the outset of the Revolution he believed that the superior virtue of
the American people would prove sufficient to maintain a balance between
liberty and order in the new republics being formed by the states. In his
Thoughts on Government
, written early in 1776, and in his draft of the Massachusetts
Constitution three years later, he advocated popular governments with
checks on the abuse of power adequate to maintain their republican purity.

As he viewed the American experiments in government from Europe during the
1780s, Adams lost faith in the political virtue of his countrymen. He saw
them repeating the mistakes of Europe, especially in the feverish pursuit
of luxury, with its inevitable social and political corruption and its
nurturing of class antagonisms. More controls and authority were now
needed to govern a society dividing into the aristocratic few and the
democratic many. In his last two years abroad he hastily wrote the three
volumes of
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of
America
. This cumbersome work declared that a strong, independent executive was
essential to mediate between opposing interests. The continued growth of
corruption would in the distant future make free elections impossible and
a hereditary executive preferable. This concept in the
Defence
would plague the remainder of Adams' career with the charge of
being a monarchist, even though he never advocated hereditary succession
for his own day. The French Revolution further strengthened his belief
that political freedom could be preserved only by a balanced government
effectively controlling the natural rivalry of men for wealth and
distinction. The quest for equality, he predicted, would inevitably bring
chaos and the loss of the freedom that the French revolutionaries sought.

By the time he returned home in 1788, Adams had transferred his hope for
the future of American republicanism from the states to the national
government. He readily approved the new federal Constitution, which so
much resembled his handiwork in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780,
but he wanted an even stronger executive than provided for by the
Philadelphia convention. The president, he thought, should be freed from
the shackles of the Senate in making appointments and approving treaties.
He wrote to Jefferson of his fear that Congress was certain to encroach on
the powers of the president in these and other areas where executive
independence was essential; the president needed an absolute veto over
acts of the legislature if he was to mediate effectively between opposing
interests. Vice President Adams argued in the Senate that the president
should be addressed by some such title as "His Highness" or
"His Majesty, the President," in keeping with the
near-monarchical office to which he had been elected.